Construction of a new ball mill as part of the major Ravenswood Gold expansion is well underway, with completion due in May.

Ausenco, WDC (Western Downs Contracting), M2P, Sun Engineering and Minelec are among the contractors working on the project at the North Queensland gold mine.

A Ravenswood Gold spokeswoman said the concrete work was 75 per cent complete and the overall mill build about 16 per cent complete.

This fourth mill at the site will increase Ravenswood Gold milling capacity from 5 million tonnes per annum to 7.2Mtpa.

The mill construction commenced with a single pour of more than 1000 cubic metres of concrete in November to form the base foundation.

Ravenswood Gold said this foundation was the biggest single pour on site for WDC and Charters Towers Concrete, taking more than 24 hours to complete (Image below).

Work is also continuing on a massive gabion retaining wall to support a pad to store ore prior to feeding into the mine’s new primary crusher.

Workers are placing about 5600 tonnes of small rocks inside the wire structure to build a wall that will measure 27m high at its highest point and 170m long when completed.

This work is due for completion this month, with Ausenco, Pensar and Geofrabrics all involved in the build.

The expansion project paves the way for Ravenswood Gold to increase gold production to more than 200,000 ounces a year, and extend the life of the mine operation by about 12 years.

The project includes construction of a crushing and screening plant; ball mill and gravity concentrator; leach tanks; a new gold room; a tailings thickener and a 5 million tonnes tailings storage facility (which will be expanded via a series of stages to 100 million tonnes).

Supporting works include site access roads, gridline power capacity increase, relocation of Telstra lines, a new mine services area and site accommodation upgrade.

Ravenswood Gold said it was on track to complete the expansion works by middle of this  year.